Very exciting news. We were awarded three more Queensland National Trust Awards for 2013. A High Commendation Govenror’s Award was received for the Year Two Mudgeeraba Discovery Walk, A Silver Community Award for the Commemorations Project for th eLight Horse Museum, and a Gold Governors Award for the work done for Gold COast City Council on the Heritage Program of work. Great...

It was ‘roll up your sleeves’ for workshop participants at Bankfoot House, Sunshine Coast, as they learnt how to create engaging education programs for their museums. Cath Gordon from Education Creations and myself teamed up to develop and present a workshop where attendees got to test out their skills in developing activities relevant for their own museums. The workshop included the latest Australian curriculum...

Great article on page 3 of the Brisbane Courier Mail, Saturday 6th June, about 21st century students having different needs. They quote Prof Nairn, Exective director of the Australian Secondary Principals Association. ‘If students don’t learn the way we teach, we have got to teach the way they learn.’ It seems iTeachers are tech savvy, drawing on students skills and curiosity. He says, ‘It’s about how do...

Below is the transcript of a Seven minute ‘lightning talk I gave at the recent Museums Australia (MA) ‘Meet Day’ at Sydney’s Maratime museum – a prequel to the national Museums Australia conference. The meet day, for the first time, brought together three special interest groups of MA – the Educators, Digital experts and Evaluators. My talk addresses bridging digital divides through students...

A one-day workshop about creating Digital Storytelling excursions for you museums. Digital Storytelling Learning engages students with the stories and artefacts in your museum through the creative challenge of creating a short 3-5 minute movie while at your museum. These excursions enable school students to come to your museum, armed with their iPads and create digital stories which they showcase at the end of the day. These...

As I was going over my notes from day 1 of the Museums Australia Conference in Launceston I was struck that it read a bit like a poem – so I nudged it into one. Here are the ideas and words of wisdom from the speakers on the day… I Resurection, Relevance a new audience found Finding relevance in a contemporary community Standards ever increasing Outlook change evidence audience Shrinking numbers of arts journalist As...

Have a watch of this video – Science Museum’s Mystery Boxes Its a great experiment for students to try and figure out what is inside the mystery boxes. A great process too for investigation and discussion – low tech – just post-it nots and worksheets. What ways could this process be applied to non science museums – how might you run this? What objects might you use? Great ending – I won’t...